Perseus/Chapter Three
The third chapter of GRANDMASTA's Perseus, published on the August 15, 2014. Last Chapter: Chapter Two Next Chapter: Chapter Four Chapter Three One week later. I’m not sure what season it is. I have literally forgotten. I don’t remember the last time that I looked at a watch, or kept track of time. I’ve been having brain fades recently and I black out every now and then…I fuckin sleep for ten hour periods. Wake up feeling like shit almost every day, in a grumpy mood. Who wouldn’t be like that in the morning when you are sharing a one bedroom fucknugget of a house with two other people? The good thing is, the people are the best I could ask for. I love Laina. I have come to terms with the fact that I have fallen completely in love with her again, even more so than before. All of her mannerisms and just her kind, bubby personality makes me warm inside. We don’t talk much, though. I just don’t know what to say. She kissed me after her suicide attempt, but it was only on the cheek. I think it was more of a ‘thankyou’ than a ‘I’m ready to move on from Sebastian.’ Only time will tell. I get up off the couch, carefully try to avoid a sleeping Will on the floor, and open up the pantry. It’s empty. Great. My stomach is roaring like fuckin’ Simba. I think I woke Will up. “Nick, what the shit was that noise just now?” I had a chuckle. “Sorry, mate. That was the stomach having a rumble. We are really lacking some food, man.” “What do you suppose we do about that, Nick?” Will said. Will propped himself up on the couch and reached for his bag on the floor, which contained his personal items and some spare food, I presume. We clearly need to go on a run to the market, but I got a feeling Will still doesn’t want to do anything too dangerous after Libby’s death. “Well, we could start up the car and make a run to the supermarket down the road…” Will’s eyes told a whole other story. He was not a fan of my idea at all, and leaned into me and said in a somewhat calm and clear voice: “Nick, what kind of ridiculous idea is that?” I didn’t know what to say…even I gotta admit that the idea was a bit risky, and we probably wouldn’t make it out alive, let alone find any damn food. Will starts rummaging through his bag and takes out his tin lunchbox. Even though a lunchbox just takes up space in this world and is rendered useless, he keeps it since it was a gift from Libby, which is achingly depressing. He opens it up to find wrappers of formerly fresh packaged goods and a few apple cores. He’s all out. Will starts to laugh, sarcastically. “So when we headin’ out to that supermarket, huh?” He says. Will’s shiteating grin bugs me sometimes, but I guess I have to get used to it. The door to the bedroom slowly opens and out comes Laina. She smiles at Will and slowly walks over to me and pats me on the shoulder. Oh boy. “So what’s this about a supermarket?” She says. Those big green eyes looking up into mine are about to make me explode. I get a strange feeling, like we are in a relationship again. “I-uh…we need more food. We gotta try start up the car and make a run for that supermarket down the road.” “Cool, seems like a good plan. Shall I get ready?” “Yeah, meet us outside in five.” Will and I are sitting in the car which is parked on the curb outside the house. There are no corpses in sight, luckily, which should mean an easy ride. “Won’t the sound of the car attract them?” Will asks me. “Who?” “Who the flying shit do you think? The corpses!” “Oh, right. Well we are only going up two blocks, and there aren’t many of ‘em around here, so I hope not.” “I swear if I go down up there because of this lame ass idea, when you die and get to those pearly gates, I’m gonna fly kick you in the balls, Nick.” “I’ll be looking forward to that.” Laina hops in the car, and has a kitchen knife around her waist for protection. Will and I have the two guns, since Laina is a terrible shot. Not like I’m any better. “Let’s go, boys.” Will takes his foot off the break and keeps it that way for the whole ride. It’s excruciating how slow we are going, but he won’t put on the fucking accelerator because “It’s too damn dangerous.” The streets are basically empty, only things in sight are a couple knocked over rubbish bins and a couple looted cars. There is nothing in our way from here to the supermarket two blocks down from my point of view, but Will has to play it safe, which is smart in a way. “Will we have been in here for two minutes and haven’t even made it past the first block! Just accelerate, damn it!” Laina demands, to the surprise of Will. “Oh okay! If you say so!” Will barks, slamming his foot on the accelerator. We go from doing 10 km/h to 50 within seconds, and end up halfway down the second block before I spot an upright tyre rim in the middle of the road. “Shit, Will! Look out!” I yell. The rim misses the front wheels but comes in contact with a back one, which causes us to spin out and crash into a tree. The cars fucked. All the airbags come out and we just sit there in silence for a couple minutes. Nobodies hurt. I decide to break the tension. “You could’ve put your foot on the damn break a bit earlier, Will.” “A bit earlier? The rim came out of fuckin’ nowhere! There was no time for reaction! You shitting me? There’s no FOOT to BREAK!” Will pushes all the air bags out his face, grabs his bag from the back seat, and kicks open his car door. He storms off towards the shopping complex, which is no more than ten meters away from us. “What’s up his ass?” Laina asks me, which makes me laugh. It’s cute when she speaks so vulgarly for such a soft and sincere person. “He’s just nervous about the run. And very mad we fucked up a good car—doesn’t matter. Are you okay?” “Yeah, Nick. Let’s go.” The shopping complex is one big building that contains a supermarket, a newsagency, and a liquor store. As Laina and I enter the complex, we see Will downing a bottle of gin in the liquor store. The complex looks completely ravaged, rubbish and newspapers are scattered all over the floor, most of the windows are broken, and there is blood. A corpse is hanging from the COLES sign on top of the Coles supermarket. Laina puts her hand over her mouth in disbelief. I feel like I should comfort her, so I awkwardly put my arm around her and bring her in. “I need to you to watch my back in there, okay? Be strong.” I ask of her. She nods as we slowly walk into the supermarket. The supermarket is somewhat small, it’s more like a convenience store, but it has quite a few isles. Laina rushes to the toiletries isle, whilst I stroll over to fruit and veg. The smell is atrocious. There is barely any food left, but I can spot an orange and avocado decomposing. I walk back to the checkout area of the store to get a good look at every isle, and decide to go the canned goods section. I walk to the isle and spot a corpse looking straight at me. The sweats start coming out. I’ve only killed a few of these before, and I’m somewhat unprepared right now. Gunfire may attract more. I look at my surroundings and spot nothing on the shelves, so I decide to rip one of the grid like shelves off its cantilever and charge at the corpse. I jump on it holding the shelve to its head, and knock it to the floor. I swiftly hop off the body and jump on the shelve across its face, which dices the corpses head into pieces and causes its skull to pop. I look up, and Laina is standing, shocked at the other end of the isle. “Jesus shit, Nick. You could’ve given me a holler, I have the knife.” She said. She rushed towards me and started checking me for scratches. “Are you okay? Talk to me!” “Yeah, I’m fine Lil. I’m fine” We awkwardly stare into each other’s eyes as she holds my arms, until a large thud comes from the lobby part of the complex. “I’ll check it out, Lil. Stay here.” “Just shout or something if you need me. I’ll keep looking around.” As I walk into the lobby of the complex, I spot three things. Firstly, the entrance door is wide open, meaning someone has exited or left. Secondly, there are about four or five corpses coming out of the newsagency because of the noise, and they have spotted me. Thirdly, the thud was Will fighting off some hooded man. Will has the hooded man down in a headlock, and spots me. He slides his hand to his back pocket and shoots the man in the head, causing his brains to fly out of his head all over the lobby floor. The zombies direct their attention from me to Will. I try to intervene and shoot them, but Will shouts at me. “GO GET LAINA, RUN OUT THE BACK EXIT! I’LL MEET UP WITH YOU!” Will starts picking off the corpses whilst I run backwards into the store. I start calling out for Laina, and get no replies. After running up a few isles, I finally hear her scream. I fear for the worst. This plan has gone completely up shit creek. I rush to the back corner of the market and find Laina at the emergency exit with a male and female dressed in somewhat casual army gear. “There! There’s one of them!” Laina says with a worried voice, pointing at me. The male soldier runs towards me, and grabs me by the arm. “We gotta go, old sport!” “But wait, I have a friend in there!” I scream, as he drags me through the back exit. I try to resist but the man is just too strong. He’s a unit. Laina and the woman exit after us, and the female soldier slams the door shut. The soldier slightly loses his grip on my arm, so I take advantage of the opportunity and give him a good old European uppercut. He falls backwards onto his ass. I start to run back around the side of the complex to get to Will. I hear Laina screaming for me to come back, but I can’t just let Will die in there. I manage to get back round to the front, but I’m shocked to see a horde of zombies coming in from where we parked up. About fifty of them. I quickly do a 180 and leg it back towards the back exit, where the male soldier pops up around the corner with an assault rifle pointed at me. I come to a quick halt and freeze, putting my hands in the air. “I meant no harm,” I yell. “Don’t shoot!” “Get down fuckhead!” the soldier yells, as I fall to my knees. He starts to open fire on the horde that’s drawing on me, and I hesitate to move forward in fear of getting in his firing line. “Alright, go,” he yells, “Run towards our jeep and fucking get in it!” I swallow my heart and reluctantly run towards the jeep. I am forced to leave Will out there to fucking die. I jump into the backseat of the camo coloured jeep next to Laina, and put my seat belt on. The woman turns her head to the back seat as the man starts up the engine, and speeds off out the car park. “Have you got any weapons?” she asks in a stern voice. “I got a pistol, she’s got a gun.” I reply “Have you ever fired it before?” “Kinda.” “Hand it over. I don’t want you doing anything you’re gonna regret.” She says. I start to laugh in her face. “Listen, lady. I ain’t givin’ you squat until you tell me where the fuck you’re taking me.” The car comes to an abrupt halt, after we have distanced ourselves from the complex. The man turns his head to speak. “Mister, we just saved you and your girlyfriend’s fucking lives back there. Be grateful you disrespectful little shit. We are taking you to the Darlington Army Barracks, where we used to work. Under the government we have set up numerous camps for found survivors across all our army sites in the city. Each army barracks has a separate codename based off of some mythological God. We only have twenty or so survivors at ours, since it’s the smallest one.” “Okay then,” Laina interrupts, “Nick, do we trust these guys?” “Listen, honey,” the male soldier says, “The names Mike Lacey. I was a father of three boys and had a beautiful loving wife two weeks ago, and two weeks ago I saw them all torn apart by a couple of decomposing strangers. I’m a real fucking person whose been through real fucking shit, and I’m a man of the law that would die for his fucking country. I want to help people so the same shit that happened to me doesn’t happen to them. I am taking you to safety, whether you like it or not, and we can come back for the other friend you mentioned later.” He directs his attention to me, “Old sport, it seems we got off on the wrong foot, but can you please fucking trust me on this?” I nod, “Yeah…sure.” Mike awkwardly smiles at me and directs his attention back to the wheel, as does the woman. Mike starts up the engine as Laina starts to speak again. “So, I had a history minor, right…so the name has got me all interested. What’s this place called?” “Perseus,” Mike says. “It’s called Perseus.” Credits *Nick *Laina *William Davids *Hooded Man *Mike Lacey *O'Connor Deaths *Hooded man Trivia *First appearance of Mike Lacey. *First appearance of O'Connor. *After posting the preview, this issue took 30 days to be released. Category:Masta Category:Perseus Category:Issues